My humps – How to cook camel

If you look back through my previous posts, you’ll see that my meats are slowly becoming more and more exotic as time goes on. That’s primarily thanks to procrastination.

You see, when I first visited Black Angus Fine Meats and filled my basket with exciting bits of frozen creatures, I was enthusiastic, but that excitement soon gave way to fear. Did I really want to taste all of these strange animals, or had the shock value of them gotten the better of me? I was determined to cook everything, but because I was slightly fearful I started with the more tame animals (in terms of taste, anyway), like wild boar, and ostrich, and have eventually, reluctantly, made my way through the freezer to the more adventurous ones.

I did what I always do, and googled. I found that most descriptions said camel tasted like sweet beef. Combine sweet beef with a get-together with my cousins, and the logical mathematical result is…meatballs. Plus, a party with my cousins would definitely involve a number of healthy glugs of alcohol for each and every card-carrying member, unless they were on drinking hiatus due to pregnancy (congrats, Hannah), so if the camel made them puke, they would never be able to blame it completely.

I googled, “the best meatballs ever,” and one of the first recipes that wasn’t an allrecipes one (why do I have an aversion to those, but yes, I definitely do) was this one. It was simple, and I was smart to trust it, because even with camel, it worked perfectly. But I skipped the sauce. Any family meatballs I have ever had have been sweet crockpot rather than tomato ones, so I decided to go with the devil they knew. Here are the two recipes I used:

A special thank-you to Mrs. Nowak, who gave me the sauce recipe as part of a recipe album for my wedding shower, along with the advice that I should never go in the water wearing a yellow bikini.

Results: The cousins ate all but two meatballs, and I made a lot of them. A few cousins said that they could taste a different aftertaste with the camel, but generally, they didn’t taste a difference from regular beef meatballs. Maybe if you cover anything with enough barbeque sauce it tastes great.

Rating: 2 yums. When I made wild boar I said that you should cook it while entertaining snobs, because it tasted similar to pork, but sounded more impressive. With camel, you might want to cook it for someone you don’t like and want to scare the pants off of. It pretty much tastes like beef, but the actual source is just plain strange.

Whole camel tenderloin being delivered tomorrow from Australia via California.
Plan to season with curry and black pepper and pit roast w/cherry wood to rare.
Ill be back to let you know how it came out…
PS. I have been cooking exotic meats at Thanksgiving for over 15 years now…

Great idea… coincidentally I stumbled on your great website faced with a very similar situation you describe. It’s funny reading this as I also have found myself experimenting with products from Black Angus Fine Meats and Game. I try to get out to their mississauga location probably every 2nd week (and go to the Thornbury store a couple of times. I do this for a few reasons:

1) The quality of everything they sell is incredible.
2) The value is almost unmatched. I am one who always prioritizes quality over cost (even if it means eating something less often). That said, not only do their prices equal or often beat others selling equal quality products, it is at the point where it is close enough to lesser-quality options that it seems like a no brainer.
3) And lastly, I basically try to always grab a couple of items that I have never tried or that in my past I had a poor experience with. Some turn out great, some I screw up, some taste good but don’t justify the cost vs. more traditional options, some are healthier, etc. etc. But it is really exciting getting out of my comfort zone. I love to cook, especially outdoors (bbq, fire, etc.) and what the most exciting thing is forcing yourself to say “screw it, lets go for it!”. More often than not, it turns out great. My latest trip there, I picked up ground camel, duck sausages, rabbit sausages and a 63 day dry aged ribeye. As I was walking towards the cash, I grabbed a small piece of frozen fois gras (I love it, never dared to try and make it myself). I know it won’t be a part of my regular diet (and of course, there are lots of whispers about the process of making fois gras). But, I would look back with disappointment if I never tried to make it at least once.

I’m definitely going to keep your camel meatball idea in mind – I completely forgot about meatballs as an appetizer (despite how many times I have eaten them like that). Thanks for the tips, really enjoy the website!

Awesome, Zach! Welcome to the weird food club! (The club password is password, in case you should ever need it. Ha!). Sounds like we have the very same interests. I haven’t been to Black Angus in a while, but it is definitely one of my favourite places to shop. The venison tenderloin might be one of the nicest meats I’ve had from there, but to be fair, I haven’t sampled nearly enough yet. Love foie gras too. I just read Jacob Richler’s book, “My Canada includes Foie Gras,” and it was good (although slightly pretentious). He talks a lot about why it shouldn’t be banned, like that geese enjoy overeating. I don’t know enough about it to know whether to agree, but it was a very informative picture of the food scene in Canada. Hope you pop in regularly so that we can trade discussion of food adventures!